Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Unless otherwise noted, any books I review on this blog I have either purchased or borrowed from the library, and I do not receive any compensation (monetary or in-kind) for the reviews.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

The attempt to eliminate entry-level
jobs by demanding that every position provides a “living wage” instead
of a step on the ladder toward economic independence leaves millions
stranded with no way to improve their economic condition. Progressives
may feel good about themselves because they have voted to increase the
minimum wage and allow the homeless to sleep in their cars year-round
(with art!). But there simply is no substitute for work experience and
the habits it inculcates if one is to build a decent life as an
individual or a head of household. The alternative is not a hammock of
governmental support, but rather the chains of welfare dependency, in
which one dares not work for fear of losing benefits, and eventually
loses the will to work for oneself and even for one’s children, instead
surrendering to despair and resentment in crime- and drug-ridden
neighborhoods filled with dangerous strangers.

In more general terms we in the United
States are in the process of de-legitimizing work. One of many problems
with a tech-centric ethos (the industry simply does not employ enough
people to make for a tech-centric economy) is that it devalues work. The
game-playing, puzzle-solving atmosphere of Google and other tech
companies that encourage their workers to stay “on-campus” all the time
is solidifying a world-view according to which ”smart” people are
successful. It is not so much what the tech-savvy do for work, which is a
limited activity, but what tech-savvy people are—smart, in a quite
limited way—and how their personalities and lifestyles are shaped, that
makes them valuable, at least in their own eyes. As for the rest of us,
and especially for those who work with their hands, they are stand-ins,
doing a job until automation takes over for them.

Particularly when one listens to the
hypocritical virtue signaling of the likes of Messrs, Zuckerberg, and
Gates, one senses an attitude of entitlement mixed with contempt that
leaves little room for compassion, let alone a desire to allow people
the means by which to forge lives of dignity. Importing workers who
cannot leave or ask for raises for fear of losing their visas, exporting
manufacturing jobs to veritable slave labor camps, and pushing for
welfare and other government programs that provide a “safety net” that
keeps the poor safely out of their way, today’s oligarchs see no need to
maintain a society of opportunity for anyone who does not score well on
college entrance exams or I.Q. tests. (Read more.)

2 comments:

"But there simply is no substitute for work experience and the habits it inculcates ..."

Entirely depends on the kind of talents the person has or has not to be a freelance.

I think I for one have the talents, I therefore resent every attempt to impose on me this "morality" instead of opening the way for my writings and compositions to bear economic fruit, for others and for myself.

As to the rest, there is such a thing as "entry-level" works being offered time and again to someone not acquiring the kind of habits from work experience which the above writer has in mind.

That was my own experience of life before getting into trouble with the law in 1998.

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